Trylove

Featuring Abbie Phelps (https://twitter.com/goodhunterabbie)! Steven Spielberg’s update of H.G. Wells’s genre classic crumbles Tom Cruise, America’s perfect leading man, into a pool of tears and paranoia. It’s a choice consistent with the narrative of the overall movie, a metaphor for the naked, scared soul of imperialism – an unmasking of the patriotism-cum-xenophobia that shepherded thousands of...

Featuring Blake Hester (https://twitter.com/metallicaisrad)! PULSE is probably a pretty good movie! The boys think I would’ve given it a single thumbs up and made puns about the title instead of having genuine thoughts and insightful feelings about it. They’re probably right. I’m on vacation. Find Blake… At https://www.gameinformer.com/user/blake-hester At https://twitter.com/metallicaisrad At htt...

The philosophical wanderings of GHOST IN THE SHELL are exactly what give its plot – occasionally convoluted and hard to follow – a safe cushion on which to land. The conclusions it draws about the creation and maintenance of identity are mirrored in Motoko, a cybernetic humanoid perfected by the Japanese government, and the Puppet Master, the sentient amalgam of networked information she’s tasked...

The Golden Barrys return and they’re as contentious as ever! And a little freakier. What does that even mean? We’re glad you asked. Kind of! Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at trylovepodcast@gmail.com to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: A...

Dedicated to the “mountebanks” and “clowns” who produced lighthearted escapist fare during World War II, SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS was director Preston Sturges’s attempt to make the fun of that genre the message of his own entry. Elitist film director John Sullivan seeks authenticity in his own high-minded cinema, insisting on ‘earning’ the right to make ‘true’ stories of the downtrodden by living in the...

Returning guest Seth Zarate grabs his trumpet to blow down the Walls of Jericho! It’s the movie that came up with the thing where a lady hitchhikes by showing a bit of her bare leg instead of pointing out her thumb! IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT is also a funny early romantic comedy that, in lieu of a balance between “rom” and “com,” often leans into its uncomfortable scenarios without giving the audience...

Socialite divorcee Tracy Lord is engaged again to the nouveau riche George Kittredge, which puts her back in the spotlight of Spy Magazine’s writer and photographer, who’ve been put on the scent by Tracy’s ex-husband in a transparent bid to win her back. THE PHILADELPHIA STORY helped reverse Katharine Hepburn’s slumping career, but it’s also a fun rom-com that leverages class politics (old money,...

With a BANG, POW, THWAP, and ZAKOW – it’s the original live-action Batman! In this episode, we discuss the film’s greatest gags, its surprising self-awareness, the compelling choice to make Batman’s first live-action outing a straight-up parody of Batman, and what this version of Batman has on the ones that have come since. As of this recording, BATMAN is available to stream on HBO Now. If you don...

Listening note: Zencastr fucked up Harry’s track at the start of Cody’s Noteys. It was a fun round, so I elected to keep the episode going and truncate Harry’s track where I could. Sorry for the poor listening experience. Produced by Motown founder Berry Gordy, THE LAST DRAGON is a genre mashup of kung fu, blaxploitation, and comedy that clings to its Hero’s Journey trappings only long enough to g...

Here we are, old friends. 200 published episodes of our podcast. Thank you so much for listening to even one episode! We get so much out of doing this podcast, discussing movies, learning about our friends, and meeting new people while we’re at it. To celebrate, we each came up with a different Trylove-themed game with which to challenge the others. That’s right: It’s an all-killer, no-filler epis...

𝙼𝙰𝙳 𝙶𝙾𝙳 𝚍𝚊𝚍 𝚋𝚘𝚍 𝚋𝚊𝚍 𝚙𝚘𝚍. In production for decades, Phil Tippett’s MAD GOD is a stunningly crafted piece of mixed media that impresses on levels of both scale and detail. Its broad narrative follows an agent of the end of the world on a mission to restart the universe violently. Telling its story without dialogue, its visuals and soundscape chart several cycles of death, calcification, and rebirth...

Content warning: Discussions of sexual violence. ROADGAMES is about an American man hauling meat through the Australian outback who REAR WINDOW (1954)s himself into believing he’s seen evidence of a murder. It’s also about the feeling of coming back to a community after identifying yourself against it for so long. It’s a bit goofy, a bit spooky, sometimes pretty trippy, and often a lot of fun. Fol...

It’s a horror comedy, so we simply had to know what Natalie Marlin (https://twitter.com/NataliesNotInIt) thought of it! THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD is a strange, pioneering movie. That’s about as much as Jason can type about this movie because he wasn’t on this episode and didn’t see the movie. Enjoy! Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at trylovepodcast@gmail...

PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE is maybe the freakiest movie from maybe the freakiest director. It’s a bit of a Brian De Palma kaleidoscope, blowing his obsession with showing you the unseen mechanics of a scene into a grand, grotesque, obscene scale. Follow Kelly on Twitter at https://twitter.com/kransekage_ and on Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/luckyhoss/ “The Hell of It: My Top 5 Favorite Songs f...

Content warning: Discussions of sexual violence. Purificazione isn’t really a witch. The spell she casts on Antonio, a man promised to another woman, doesn’t really have any magic to it. But that doesn’t stop him from creating a narrative that leads to Purif being blamed for the whims of the cosmos (the death of a child, the richness of the soil, etc.). But as the village becomes more and more con...

Look past the false one-take! Look deeply into the grotesque detail underneath the post-intellectualist veneer! ROPE is a tightly wound tool of class violence, spotlighting the evil, anti-moralizing pragmatism of the elitist class. THE MINNEAPOLIS HITCHCOCK FESTIVAL (until Oct 6): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/the-minneapolis-hitchcock-festival/ Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/...

Content warning: Discussions of sex work, abuse, and suicide. Kuniko is a woman stuck between who she was – a prostitute – and who she wants to be: an accepted member of a society that’s actively cracking down on people with her history. In asking whether it’s society’s responsibility to accept Kinuko or her responsibility to ‘reform,’ GIRLS OF THE NIGHT doesn’t go as far as you might want in norm...

WWII veteran Reikichi ghostwrites letters for Japanese prostitutes to send to their American GI boyfriends. One of those women happens to be Michiko, Reikichi’s lifelong flame – and, as a staunch nationalist and traumatized veteran, he doesn’t approve of her consorting with Japan’s former enemy. Can he suppress his loyalist purism long enough to recognize the humanity of the person he claims to lo...

In Disney’s fifth animated feature, nature maintains and sustains an otherwise rote plot. This episode is a bit silly. But it’s a great discussion. I think so, at least. Manny Farber’s 1942 review of BAMBI for The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/article/134248/saccharine-symphony CRACKING OPEN THE DISNEY VAULT (Sept at the Trylon): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/cracking-open-the-disn...

Falling in the middle of actress-turned-director Kinuyo Tanaka’s directing work, FOREVER A WOMAN (titled in Japanese as THE ETERNAL BREASTS) is an unflinching portrait of a woman seeking to define herself against the assumptions the world makes about her. After divorcing her unfaithful husband, Fumiko is diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer on the cusp of a lucrative poetry career. The people w...

Content warning: This episode includes mention of sexual assault. Joyce Chopra’s haunting narrative debut follows Connie, a 15-year-old on summer vacation who slowly and unintentionally lands in the orbit of a man who calls himself Arnold Friend (“a friend”). Amid the throes of family drama, discovering her own burgeoning sexuality, and under the increasingly intense gaze of the men around her, Co...

Featuring guest Dan Nagan of Everything We Learned (https://twitter.com/adapperdanman)! Red and Mandy live in remote, mountainous California. Jeremiah Sand wants Mandy for his own. When he finally gets her and finds out he can’t earn her love, fealty, or fear, he burns her alive in front of her beloved. Red, newly given to the righteous, hellacious power of grief, embarks on a bloodbath rampage to...

Featuring guest Nick Kouhi (​​https://twitter.com/kouhi_nick)! The debut of Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel is hot – but in an uncomfortable, sweaty, drenched kind of way. The matriarch of a rural summer home is bedridden after a drunken poolside injury; her cousin brings her family to tend house; her children play with guns in the woods and fish with machetes; there might be a monster lurki...

With writer and former Trylon volunteer Nazeeh Alghazawneh (https://twitter.com/naazeeehh)! In the bones of ELECTRA, MY LOVE, there sits one of the most important Greek myths. But the surface of Miklós Jancsó’s anti-Soviet retelling is reserved for a more direct comment on eternal cycles of power, the need for change in those who hold it, and the effect it has on those subject to it. Comprising on...

When $300,000 goes missing in New York City – a numbers racket payout of both Italian and black mob money – cops, mafiosi, and gangsters alike chase down every lead to get it back. In ACROSS 110TH STREET, lines are drawn between cops and criminals, wealthy and poor, white and black, neighborhoods and ghettos. Jim Harris, an impoverished Black man with a disability, plans to take advantage of all t...